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2007 - July 3rd - Tuesday

In the morning, the District Nurse, Mary Bray, called and squeezed the wound to express some more ‘bitty’, yellow fluid; Mary and JH assured the Nurse that the wound looked less inflamed than yesterday.  Mary went off to do some shopping – including purchasing a set of new saucepans for JH (with JH’s money of course) because she was in despair with using JH’s pans which were all between 40 and 50 years old, some with wobbly handles – and some were made of aluminium which Mary affirmed could ‘pollute’ the food cooked therein, and so increase JH’s digestive troubles.  JH was given some gauze, by the Nurse, should she need it, but a dressing was not applied, so JH just changed her nighties, vests, etc as necessary, and had a grand clothes-washing session later in the week; there was a considerable amount of leakage from the wound during the night (so the bed linen and mattress cover eventually got washed as well).


 

Bill Hipsey phoned JH and we had a most interesting hour’s conversation: amongst a lot of other chat, Bill told JH that he had spent about 7 months in a TB sanatorium, shortly after he got married; JH recollected that at least one of her fellow pupils at school had contracted TB; furthermore, Laura J, one of JH’s previous nursing colleagues, had spent 18 months or so in a spinal bed as a young woman; Laura now has Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma for which she has agreed to enter into a trial of a new drug treatment at Derriford Hospital.  Subsequently, Lyn told JH that Laura severely relapsed and was admitted to Hospital on Boxing Day 2007 where she was told that there was no further treatment which could be offered to her: Laura died early in February 2008.

Kathy was still having trouble with using the Patientline console, and sent a desperate plea to JH to send her email address again.  Kathy told JH that she had emailed Edwin in Canada.  Both these messages were sent ‘at the top of’ an email JH had sent to the Skinners on 14th June.

2007 - July 4th - Wednesday

JH noted that she wrote in her ordinary diary that she was ‘up betimes!’  JH received the tickets for Karen Paolillo’s Talk, so she quickly typed a covering letter to the Zimbabwean Staff on Paulin Ward and sent the tickets to the RLH – by handing the letter to Mary to post. {In the meanwhile, Mary had a look through Vashti Vincent’s Artwork – both of us having forgotten that Mary had not done so; Mary sorted out some of Vashti’s floral and animal paintings/drawings, but left them behind for now, as she had so much to carry.  Vashti Vincent was a friend of the whole Hipsey family: In 2006 JH had become ‘custodian’ of Vashti’s effects following her death in a residential home in Maidenhead.}

Mary departed - to pick up the Tavistock bus at the Hospital - by taxi at 11.00am.  Mary stripped and made up JH’s lower bunk bed with clean sheets before she left – in spite of the lack of space between it and the hippos’ bunk bed above!  JH replied to Kathy’s email: JH congratulated Kathy on even attempting to use the Patientline console, and managing to ‘get through’; and JH Told Kathy about having a wound infection.  In the evening Mary kindly rang JH to say she had remembered to post the letter to the Zimbabwean Staff on Paulin Ward.

During the rest of the day JH pottered about doing odd jobs, even including a sortie into the garden to do things like picking off the tomatoes’ side shoots, and even including throwing sheets in the washing machine.  In the evening Angela Tilly phoned and a 2 hour conversation ensued!  After sitting, full of wind, for two hours JH ate some fruit – which proved to be an unwise move, as JH ‘lost’ the fruit twice, and ‘lost’ her evening antibiotic capsule twice, but retrieved it twice as the casing had not had time to dissolve(!?).  JH’s throat felt very sore after ‘returning’ acidic stomach contents.



 
 
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